We came to the bridge which had marked the terminal point of two previous attempts. On one of those attempts, King had turned his people back at this… - Maurice Davis

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We came to the bridge which had marked the terminal point of two previous attempts. On one of those attempts, King had turned his people back at this spot. On the other attempt, the state troopers had ridden into the crowd with clubs, and bullwhips, and tear gas. We paused there a moment, just to remember, and then we moved out on the highway. It was a divided highway, and the North side was reserved for us. Every few yards a soldier stood with a rifle and bayonet. Army cars drove ahead of us and behind us. In the air five helicopters circled endlessly, occasionally swooping down just above a clump of trees or bushes. Radios and walkie-talkies crackled orders back and forth. State troopers drove by in squad cars, two to a car. One drove, and the other quite ostentatiously took pictures of the marches. This is an Alabama form of intimidation. I kept remembering that these were the same state troopers who had two weeks earlier had ridden mercilessly into a defenseless mass of people! I marveled again at the power of the federal government whose presence stood between us and another massacre.

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About Maurice Davis

Maurice Davis (15 December 1921 – 16 December 1993) was an American Rabbi and human rights activist. He was a past director of the American Family Foundation, now known as the International Cultic Studies Association. Davis was the rabbi of the Jewish Community Center of White Plains, New York, and a regular contributor to The Jewish Post and Opinion, where he had a column. He served on the President's Commission on Equal Opportunity, in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration.

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Additional quotes by Maurice Davis

We are concerned, gentlemen. We are deeply concerned with cults. So let me begin by offering not a definition of cults since everyone has said you must not do this, but let me offer you a description of cults. It seems to me that any cult has to have the following characteristics: One, a dictatorial leader, often called charismatic, who has total and unlimited control over his group. Two, followers who have abdicated the right to say no, the right to pass judgment, the right to protest, who have sold their souls for the security of slavery. Three, possibly the most dangerous doctrine known to our civilization, that the end justifies the means; therefore, any thing from the Moonies' heavenly deception to the violence of Synanon to the theft of government documents by Scientology, to the brutality of the Children of God, all the way to the murder-suicide of Jonestown, all is permitted because the ends justify the means and there is no one there to tell them no. Four, unlimited funds. The Unification Church with its some $50 million brought in each year by its mobile fund raising teams is duplicated by the Hare Krishnas dressing as Santa Claus or the Children of God sending out their women as fishers of men. Five, the instilling of fear, hatred, and suspicion of everyone outside the camp, of the entire outside world in order to keep the victims in line. You put them all together gentlemen … You have a prescription for violence, for death, for destruction. It is a formula that fits the Nazi Youth Movement as accurately as it describes the Unification Church. … Or the People's Temple.

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It’s frightening what these Moonies can do to the family unit … I get letters from parents all over the country telling me the same story … The kids are swept along by his outfit and then taken away for a few days to a "workshop." By the time the parents see their kids again — if they can manage to see them — the kids are starry-eyed and ready to take on anyone who disagrees with them. It’s a form of hypnotism. There is something very unhealthy going on.

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